Need to keep your kids busy? Check out this water play idea using recycled materials, which is sure to make your water play for toddlers WAY more fun.  Teach recycling to preschoolers (and have lots of clean, wet fun in the process!) with this new, eco-friendly idea.

One of our favorite ways to keep our kids entertained is water play for toddlers and preschoolers. We can set up a water table, sprinkler, or even throw the kiddos in the bathtub and they will splash, scoop, and pour the day away.

But every once in a while, our water play ideas get “boring.” According to our ungrateful kids, anyways. We have to find ways to keep it fresh and interesting (bonus points if it doesn’t take longer to prep than it does for our kids to play with). 

We love to play with recyclable materials over here (like our bubble wrap prints and our Bunch o Balloons paintbrushes). We have a rule, actually- before we throw anything out, we ask ourselves “is there a way for the kids to make art with this?” and “Is there a way for our kids to play with this in a new way?”

Which is how we came up with this water play idea with recycled materials. After a quick clean up, our recyclable materials are ready to give new life to our water play (and are still fit for recycling preschool efforts afterwards).

Looking for new ways to engage your kids with preschool water play?

Need an easy, no prep open ended art project for preschoolers or toddlers to help fill some time today? We’ve got creative process art using paint and cookie cutters to help your kids create an adorable stamp art project for kids.

If you’re anything like us, you’re finding yourself with a LOT of time to fill at home. And while kids’ craft projects are great (and have adorable outcomes), they just don’t take up much time. 

The problem with crafts is that we often end up spending WAY more time prepping and setting up the craft than we do actually doing the craft. And these days, that just isn’t gonna fly.

We’re turning more and more towards open ended art projects for our preschoolers, and our bigger kids too. Just about anything that can be used to make art in this house is finding its way into paint and then onto paper.

This stamp art project for kids requires very few special materials– just cookie cutters, paint, and paper. It’s easy to tailor for any theme you may have (well, provided you have a cookie cutter stash), and provides quick fun when you’re in a jam.

And read to the end for a fun way to use up all that beautiful process art your kids have created!

Okay, so let’s get to it. Here’s how to set up a stamping art project for kids at your house, too.